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I’m sure by now everyone has seen Bakerella’s cake pops. If you haven’t, you really must head over there to see her cute stuff. She even made cheesecake pops, which I am totally going to try. But anyway, I was going to make some cake pops as my final Valentine idea post, but my cake pop “dough” totally flopped. Did I add too much frosting? Was my cake too moist to begin with? I have no idea, but it was not working. I was bummed because I think cake pops are super cute. I was just about to bake up another cake and try again when I happened to link over to this post, which is on the Happy When Not Hungry blog, written by Kara, who commented on my Fortune Cookie post, which is how I found it. Are you following me so far? So her Peanut Butter and Nutella Rice Krispy bites (which sound amazing, by the way) reminded me of my Christmas peanut butter balls recipe, and I got to wondering if they would work on sticks. So I tried it.

And they were good.

It’s funny, I’ve made all kinds of treats for this blog– cupcakes, fortune cookies, decorated cookies, rice krispy treats, etc., and nothing excited my kids like these did. They walked in the door from school yesterday and said “Woa!! COOL! Can we have one? You know– after you take your pictures.” (They are well-trained) These are definitely kid-pleasers.

Mix together the corn syrup, melted butter, vanilla and salt in a medium-large bowl.

Add the powdered sugar

and the peanut butter

Stir carefully (so the powdered sugar doesn’t poof all over you). At first it will look like this:

And then it will form a dough, almost like peanut butter cookie dough.

Now you need to roll it into small balls. What I do to get them even is scoop them with my cookie scoop:

And then cut those in half. Kind of weird, but it makes the right size. You really don’t want huge balls of this, or the ratio of peanut butter to chocolate will be off. The smaller ones will be more like Reeses Peanut Butter cups. If you have a smaller cookie scoop than I do, you might be able to just use that.

So after you cut the scoops in half, roll them into balls. and put them in a pan so that you can put them in the freezer.

Freeze them for about 20 minutes. You don’t want them frozen solid, or they’ll crack when you put the stick in, but you want them pretty firm.

While they’re in the freezer, melt some “chocolate”. I put chocolate in quotes because this isn’t real chocolate. You can certainly use real chocolate if you want, but I’m a terrible chocolate temperer (is that a word?) My friend Tara is a real-life chocolatier, and she wouldn’t be caught dead using this stuff. But for me and my kids… yeah, I’m all over it. I actually really love using Merkens wafers. They’re pretty good for fake chocolate, and it’s so easy to work with. So melt some fake chocolate. Valentine colors are fun, so I picked pink to start with.

Dip a lollipop stick in the chocolate just so the bottom 1/4″ or so is covered.

Then take one of your firmed-up peanut butter balls and insert the stick.

Next, dip them into the chocolate. You’ll want to go straight down, and use a spoon to help cover them. If you’re swirling them around too much, they could come loose and fall off the stick. If you want a really great video on this, check out the Amazon page for Bakerella’s book, and it’s the exact same process. She does a good job showing you how to do it. I’m sure that video is on her web site somewhere, too, but I couldn’t find it.

You’ll want to lightly tap off the excess.

If you don’t want to put them on sticks, you can also dip the balls by themselves. I like to use two forks and a spoon for dipping. First, I dip the bottom of the ball into the chocolate, then set it on a fork. Then I use the spoon to pour chocolate over it. Then I tap the fork on the edge of the bowl to get rid of the excess. I move it over to a sheet of parchment paper, and use the second fork to push it off the first fork onto the paper. I hope that makes sense, because the only picture of the process I got was this one:

Which pretty much shows you nothing.

While the chocolate is still wet, sprinkle with assorted decorations. I made a mixture of white, pink, and red non pariels for some:

Ok, that’s it for Valentine’s ideas. From here on out, you’re on your own. :D Have a great weekend and a Happy Valentine’s Day!!

I’ll be back next week with some cookies that I can’t wait to show you! My kids told me what to make (they even gave me sketches to go by) and I recreated their ideas in cookie form. I’d better finish ‘em up before they get home from school. They’re going to love them, and I hope you do, too!

33 Responses to “Peanut Butter Pops”

Ok, those have to be the cutest yet easiet thing I have seen. I am dipping strawberries tomorrow morning so, I know what I am going to make now with my left over chocolate! I know I bought way more chocolate then I need so, this will be fun to make and take around to friends. Thanks for sharing your recipe.

That’s a good question about the fake peanut butter– If it’s “all natural” almond butter or something similar you might run into some problems. I make these (not on sticks) for Christmas and Halloween every year, and one time I made them with All-Natural peanut butter (the kind you have to stir because it separates), and it did not work well at all. It got super crumbly and was a mess. You might be able to play around with the amount of powdered sugar you add and make it work though. Good luck!

These sound so yummy and look great! I am definitely going to make these soon :) My husband isnt the biggest fan of chocolate but he does LOVE his Reeces Peanut Butter Cups so he’ll probably love these :) Thanks!!

Can you put the sticks in the balls before freezing? or does that smash them? What if I try the Buckeyes recipe which, I think, has rice krispies in it? That would make the balls firmer… and crunchy on the inside. Glad we live where we can just put stuff in the garage on a bakers rack to chill… the freezer is already pretty much crammed full of leftovers and such.

You can put the sticks in mid-freeze. They have to be firmed up a little before you put the sticks in or they will get smooshed, but you can definitely put them back in the freezer (or garage!) with the sticks in them to finish freezing.

I made these and they are to die for. A hit with everyone who tried them! I did run into 2 little problems, a lot of them cracked just sitting upright drying not sure why, maybe I let them get too cold…? The sticks went in easy so they werent frozen not sure why it happened to most of them. Not that is made them taste less wonderful. And where they cracked the oil from the peanut butter started to leak out, again not pretty but delish! And I love them cold!